Devenir Fan

Britain may be too censorious about its politicians’ sex lives butnudge-nudge admiration is no less misguidedWhich French politician was sleeping with which famous actress? Whichpresident had fathered a secret love-child? Which two former presidentsshared a girlfriend? Which dumped mistress had tried to kill herself?These were the fevered topics of conversation in Parisian journalisticcircles when I worked there in the 1990s and the chatter has hardly changedsince. The complex, semi-public sex lives of French politicians are stillendlessly debated but seldom reported, in obedience to France’s strictprivacy laws and a longstanding cultural taboo.The adultery of politicians is discussed in France, not with moralisingdisapproval, but a desire to display insider knowledge and a nudge-nudgeadmiration for sexual prowess. Sex drive is still regarded as a measure ofpolitical ambition.Successive French presidents have vied to outdo one another in bedroomreputation, regarding a certain droit de seigneur as a perk of office.Silvio Berlusconi may be the oldest swinger in town, but in France thepolitician- seducer is part of the national heritage.There is, of course, a gulf of difference between the art of seduction andwhat Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the head of the International Monetary Fund, isalleged to have done to a hotel chambermaid in New York. DSK may be innocentof attempted rape, or even, as his supporters insist, the victim of aset-up, but he is also representative of a French political culture thatwinks at promiscuity and proclaims an adult attitude to sexual infidelity,while endlessly gossiping about it.DSK’s reputation as a Lothario was legendary. But there were also hints thathis behaviour went beyond that of an experienced and energetic ladies’ man:hushed-up accusations of a sexual assault in 2002, rumours of a “too pushy”attitude towards the opposite sex, the widespread understanding that thischarming and urbane politician might be unsafe in taxis.In a recent book with the unsexy title Sexus Politicus, Christophe Duboisand Christophe Deloire argue that “almost all French male politicians arecompulsive womanisers”. The key word is “compulsive”, as France positivelyencourages its political leaders to sleep around unless, of course, theyhappen to be women. “Far from being a flaw, to cast yourself in the role ofseducer is without doubt an important quality in our political life,” Duboisand Deloire write.Sexual boasting is deeply embedded, so to speak, in French politicalhistory. President Fיlix Faure suffered a fatal stroke at the Elysיe Palacein 1899 while receiving the sexual attentions of his mistress — a feat ofamatory heroism that has entirely eclipsed anything he achieved while alive.His 20th-century namesake Edgar Faure (no relation), Prime Minster of Francein the 1950s, best expressed the swaggering attitude that persists today:“When I was a minister, some women resisted me. Once I became President [ofthe Council], not even one.”Of the postwar presidents, only Charles de Gaulle, with militaryself-discipline, regarded the marriage vow as binding. Even with advancedcancer, Franחois Mitterrand was unstoppably adulterous. When his mistressand illegitimate daughter attended his funeral, it was widely seen inFrance, with approval, as the posthumous flourish of a master swordsman.But Valיry Giscard d’Estaing surely wins the Silvio Berlusconi Award forLudicrous Sexual Dribbling Disguised as Politics: “When I was President ofthe Republic, I was in love with 17 million Frenchwomen. When I saw them inthe crowd, they felt it, and they voted for me.” In Britain, even Alan Clarkmight have hesitated to say something like that.In his memoirs, published after leaving office, Jacques Chirac gloried inhaving had numerous affairs “as discreetly as possible”. I happened to livein the same Paris street as one of his mistresses, and I can attest thatthere was nothing discreet about the arrival of the presidential motorcadeand the gendarmes who sealed off the street so that traffic noise would notdisturb him during his afternoon trysts. Thankfully, the road was notblocked for long.While Chirac painted himself as an unapologetic chaud lapin, the truth wasmore complex, as adultery always is, even in France. His wife laterdescribed how unhappy his affairs had made her. His chauffeur described amore tawdry parade of presidential conquests: “To an almost sickeningdegree,” he wrote, “Chirac has had party militants, secretaries, all thosewith whom he spent a busy five minutes.”Contrasting French discretion with the Anglo-Saxon media’s obsessiveinterest in the sex lives of politicians, the French novelist Yves Bergerapplauded the “wisdom and good sense which we in the old world, especiallyin France, have long prided ourselves on: the ability to recognise thedistinction between public and private lives”.The French species of hypocrisy is simply different from ours: politiciansare expected to stray, pretending to the public that they do not, whilethose in the know titter lasciviously in private. Not surprisingly, Frenchpoliticians have come to believe that they can behave like priapic goats andget away with it.Male politicians, that is, for French politics remains a deeply sexistworld; a woman politician would never be allowed to develop the sort ofreputation that Strauss-Kahn enjoyed — and I mean enjoyed.What a politician elects to do in bed, so long as it is legal, should not bea reason for electing him, or not. Sexual behaviour is neither a matter forcensure nor approval. The French are no more highly sexed than othernations, although they like to believe they are. According to a recentsurvey, the adultery rate is lower in France than in the US, although asthis is a subject almost certain to elicit a lie the statistics are hardlyreliable.The British may be too prudish about sexual behaviour, but the Strauss-Kahnscandal shows that French fascination with political seducers may be atleast equally misguided.Inevitably, DSK’s enemies are now lining up to claim that a blind eye wasturned to his sexual behaviour in the past. The National Front leader MarineLe Pen crowed that the whole of Paris has long been abuzz with talk aboutthe “pathological relations Mr Strauss-Kahn seems to have with women”.If heis convicted, it will demonstrate once again the fatal link between powerand sex that has destroyed so many politicians in the past. But it will alsorepresent an indictment of a macho, secretive French political culture thatregards philandering as merely part of a long French tradition: Liberté,Egalité, Infidélité.